Wednesday, 28 January 2015

The following post offers a very brief discussion of the distribution and significance of the late medieval to early post-medieval St Nicholas or 'Boy Bishop' lead tokens, including a distribution map of these based on the material recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

St Nicholas of Bari as bishop, resurrecting three murdered children from a pickling vat. From the beginning of the reading for 6 December, 'Stowe Breviary', 1322–25 (image: Public Domain)

The cult of St Nicholas and its associated 'Boy Bishop' tradition—which derived from the saint's patronage of children and involved the choosing of a boy to be dressed up as the saint, who then performed ecclesiastical duties in the period around St Nicholas's Day (6 December) and Holy Innocents (28 December)—seems to have been widespread throughout England in the late medieval period, to judge from both the prevalence of dedications to St Nicholas and the number of references to Boy Bishops that are found in sources of this era. For example, in the fifteenth century at King's College, Cambridge, the Boy Bishop was allowed to 'say and carry out vespers, matins, and other divine services', and the Boy Bishop's mitre there in the early sixteenth-century was a gift from Bishop Geoffrey Blythe of Chester, indicating the official approval of the tradition. Similarly, at Lincoln in the 1530s, a Boy Bishop celebrated vespers on the vigil of Holy Innocents; at Exeter, the cathedral chapter lent the Boy Bishop his garments and mitre; at York, the Boy Bishop would preach a sermon and then travel the region delivering it at other churches, such as Beverley, Leeds and Fountains Abbey; and at Westminster Abbey, the Boy Bishop had a special mitre made of white silk with Ora pro nobis Sancte Nicholai embroidered on it. Furthermore, Boy Bishops were not restricted to just the great churches and abbeys of England. Many of the churches in London had their own Boy Bishops, with vestments ranging from buckrum at St Martin, Ludgate, to red silk at St Nicholas Cole Abbey, as did churches in ports and market towns such as New Romney (Kent), and Louth (Lincolnshire).

Extracts from R. C. Dudding (ed.), The first churchwardens' book of Louth, 1500–1524 (Oxford, 1941); these early sixteenth-century accounts mention multiple payments for the Child Bishop (Boy Bishop), including one for making his see.

Although the 'Boy Bishop' tradition would thus seem to have been fairly widely known within fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England, the same does not appear to be true for the late medieval to early post-medieval 'Boy Bishop tokens' under consideration here. The Portable Antiquities Scheme currently records 344 such lead tokens on their database of recent metal-detected finds, and almost all of these come from East Anglia, with a particular concentration in the area around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, Suffolk:

The distribution of St Nicholas or 'Boy Bishop' tokens in England, c. 1480–1560, based on data from the PAS (drawn by C. R. Green).

Needless to say, such a distribution suggests that the tokens represent a specific, local manifestation of the more-widespread St Nicholas cult and Boy Bishop tradition, something supported by the fact that a mould for casting these tokens has been found at Bury St Edmunds. Indeed, although some of the tokens appear to have been made at Ely and Ipswich on the basis of their inscriptions, it is thought that the vast majority were very likely made in Bury St Edmunds itself. As to the purpose of these items, Stuart Rigold has argued that they were primarily low-value, symbolic lead 'tickets' distributed as largesse by the Boy Bishop to local children and the poor each December, who could then taken these tokens and redeem them for sweetmeats and alms at the Abbey or the local St Nicholas Guild (or even, perhaps, at local tradesmen who cooperated with this charitable scheme), with the practice subsequently spreading to Ely, Ipswich and other local towns. This local, East Anglian manifestation of the Boy Bishop tradition is believed to have had its heyday in the period between the 1470s/80s through to the Dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, with this local religious tradition then struggling on for a while into the reign of Queen Mary before its final suppression.

Monday, 26 January 2015

The following post is a very brief piece, intended simply to share a distribution map and details of some intriguing Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian and other early Indian coins that are recorded on the PAS database.

Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian & other early Indian coins found in Britain, based on data from the PAS (drawn by C. R. Green)

A Kushan imitation of a coin of the Indo-Greek king Hermaeus, found in Hampshire (image: PAS)

The above distribution map shows all of the early Indian coinage recorded from Britain by the PAS, with the coins depicted separated into three categories: Indo-Greek coins (c. 200–130 BC); Indo-Scythian coins (c. 58 BC–AD 10); and other early Indian coins (c. AD 40–410). With regard to these, the following notes are offered:

Indo-Greek coins: only three of these coins are recorded on the PAS, namely a coin of Menander from c. 150 BC, found at Tenby, Wales, in the late nineteenth century; a coin of Apollodotus I, c. 180–160 BC, found in London; and a coin of Demetrius, dating c. 200–185 BC and found near Newcastle. In addition, three further Indo-Greek coins—all of Menander and dating from the mid-second century BC—are recorded and mapped in this post, one from 'near Stonehenge', Wiltshire (found before 1880); one from Buriton, Hampshire (found in the 1920s); and another from Towcester, Northamptonshire (found in 1882, probably from foundations).

Other early Indian coins: there are nine 'other issues', all dating from roughly the period in which Britain was under Roman rule, consisting of one Indo-Parthian coin and eight Indo-Scythian/Kushan coins. These coins were found in Nottinghamshire (a first-century Indo-Parthian coin of Nahapana), Merseyside (a second-century Kushan coin of Kanishka I), Staffordshire (a third- to fifth-century Kushan coin), South Yorkshire (a third-century gold Kushan coin), Cornwall (a late second- or early third-century Kushan coin of Vasudeva I), Cornwall (a coin of Kujula Kadphises, who the PAS and others place broadly in the second half of the first century AD, that imitates a coin of the first-century BC Indo-Greek king Hermaeus), Hampshire (another Kushan imitation of a coin of Hermaeus, of the same general era as the last), North Yorkshire (a second-century Indo-Scythian/Kushan coin), and Norfolk (an unidentified 'Indo-Scythian' coin).

A coin of the Indo-Greek king Menander, c. 150 BC, found two feet below the ground when the foundations of a house were dug in 1881 at Tenby, Wales (image: Roche, 1992–3)

A coin of Demetrius of Bactria, dated c. 200–185 BC and found at Fenham, near Newcastle (image: PAS)

The obvious question with all of these finds is whether they represent modern losses by tourists and collectors, or if they were instead ancient losses made during the Roman period or even before. Needless to say, it is difficult to reach a definite conclusion for most of these coins, and the hypothesis that some of them are modern losses is explicitly adopted in a few of the PAS records. However, we do need to be cautious here and there are reasons for thinking that a handful, at least, may be ancient losses. Perhaps the most persuasive argument here is provided by the Indo-Greek coin of Menander from Tenby, which was found in 1881 two feet under the ground:

The circumstances of the finding of the coin of Menander at Tenby, from 'An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire: VII - County of Pembroke' (London, 1925), which assumes that the coin was brought over in the first century AD and lost at that time.

In addition to this evidence for at least one of the coins probably having been a genuinely ancient loss, the following two points may be worth noting. First, that a significant number of pre-Roman Greek coins, including Carthaginian and Ptolemaic (Egyptian) issues, are also now known from Britain, and whilst some may be recent imports, others are thought likely to be ancient losses of at least the Roman era. Indeed, it is interesting to observe that thecase has been made for at least a proportion of these coins having arrived here as a result of Mediterranean trade with pre-Roman Britain, a possibility that may be worth further consideration for at least the Indo-Greek coins listed above. Second, the PAS now has details of a significant number of these early Indian coins, and it might be wondered if the notion that they were all (except for the Tenby coin) modern losses might not seem slightly implausible, unless we are to assume that there were a surprisingly large number of careless Indian coin collectors present in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain?

A coin of the Indo-Scythian king Azes II, dated c. 20–1 BC and found at Nailstone, Leicestershire (image: PAS)

A coin of the Indo-Parthian king Nahapana, dating from c. AD 40–78 and found in Clipstone, Nottinghamshire (image: PAS)

A coin of the Kushan emperor Kanishka I (AD 127–50), minted at Begram and found at Lydiate, Merseyside (image: PAS)

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

The fifth and sixth centuries in Britain are difficult in many ways, not least the great
variety of names which are applied to this period by academic historians. For some these centuries continue to be a 'Dark Age', a name that is often criticised but which still finds its way into fairly recent book titles. For others it is the 'Heroic Age', as in the title of a current academic journal concerned with this period, whilst
others go for more sober but still very telling names such as the 'early
Anglo-Saxon' period, the 'sub-Roman' period, 'Late Antiquity' or even the 'Brittonic'—'British'—era. Each of these names does, of course, suggest a
variety of conflicting conclusions as to the nature of these centuries
and what actually took place in them. Given this, the question I want to ask here is, quite simply, how appropriate are any of these names for use when
describing Lincolnshire in the fifth and sixth centuries?

The Lincoln region in the late Roman period and after, showing the landscape of the region, the location of Lincoln, and the likely boundaries of one of the four late Roman provinces of Britannia controlled by this city (drawn by C. R. Green). Dark blue represents the sea, green permanently dry land, and light blue the wetlands and salt-marshes; the siltland around the Wash is striped to reflect its low-lying nature and origin as marine deposits in this period. For further details of this map, see here.

Let us start with what is perhaps
the most common term for these two centuries in Lincolnshire,
namely the 'early Anglo-Saxon' period. Certainly, from the perspective of the early
seventh century, this does not seem an entirely unreasonable term. The Roman
diocese of Britannia, along with the
relatively peaceful political unity that it represented, had long since
dissolved, to be replaced by a number of small and
not-so-small kingdoms. In eastern and southern Britain, these kingdoms were
ruled by lineages who believed themselves to be descended from fifth- and
sixth-century 'Anglo-Saxon' immigrants to this region who had arrived from the
area of present-day northern Germany, Holland, Denmark and Scandinavia.
Furthermore, it is often argued that both the material culture and language of
these immigrant groups were fully dominant in the region by the seventh century.

A variety of evidence might be cited in support of such a model, the most important of which are the great cremation cemeteries of the region. The scale of these sites does need to be emphasised—whereas in most of eastern Britain, 'Anglo-Saxon' cemeteries of the fifth and sixth centuries rarely contain more than a couple of hundred of burials and more often contain only a few tens, the largest of these sites contain thousands. Indeed, Lincolnshire boasts two of the three largest fifth- and sixth-century cemeteries known from England, with over 1,800 graves excavated from the Loveden Hill cemetery (out of a potential original total of c. 3,000) and over 1,500 excavated at Cleatham. Indeed, it seems likely that these cemeteries acted as social and sacred 'central places' for sizeable surrounding territories and their inhabitants, many of whom were buried in the main cemetery, whilst others were buried in surrounding subordinate small cemeteries. All told, given that such cremation-cemeteries have cultural links to the Anglo-Saxon 'homelands' on the continent, there seems little reason to doubt the reality of 'Anglo-Saxon' immigration into this region; indeed, Lincolnshire looks to have been one of the primary foci of this immigration on present evidence.

The major early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries of the Lincoln region,set against the late/post-Roman landscape (image drawn by C. R. Green, based on Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 11).

The site of Loveden Hill Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery, as visible on Google Streetview; click here for a larger version of this image.

However, we do need to be careful here. Even if we add in the smaller, later fifth- to seventh-century Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries known from the Lincoln region, which have a much wider distribution than do the large cremation cemeteries, it has to be admitted that there
are still significant issues with the notion that Lincolnshire in the fifth and sixth centuries was wholly 'Anglo-Saxon'. First, there are still large gaps in the distribution of both the cremation and inhumation cemeteries by the end of the early Anglo-Saxon period, with none at all known from the Fenland territory of the supposedly Anglo-Saxon Spalde, nor from extensive areas to the north of the River Witham and to the east of the River Trent.

Second, even in those areas that had at least some culturally Anglo-Saxon cemeteries by the seventh century,
there are still notable differences in the quantity and date of the material found. For example, in the 'peripheral' Loveden and Kirton-in-Lindsey areas we have thousands of
burials dating probably from the fifth century onwards in the great Anglian cremation cemeteries, with sometimes many hundreds in the nearby inhumation cemeteries of this area too (for example, the inhumation cemetery at Sleaford probably contained around 600 burials). However, closer to Lincoln itself, most of the known cemeteries apparently present by the seventh century only contain 5, 10 or 15
graves, and a phasing of these indicates that small Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries only really encroached into the area around Lincoln after the early sixth century. Given this significant variance in the density and date of early Anglo-Saxon burials across Lincolnshire, we do have to wonder whether it is really appropriate to speak of
the fifth- and sixth-centuries in Lincolnshire as being wholly and entirely 'early Anglo-Saxon', especially early on in this date-bracket, when the immigrant culture appears to have been even more limited in its spread than it was by the end of the period.

An enamelled Class 1 brooch from East Ravendale, Lincolnshire (image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 14; also available on the PAS)

An apparent hybrid British Type G/Class 1 enamelled brooch from Norton Disney, Lincolnshire (image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 17; also available on the PAS)

If Lincolnshire cannot be considered wholly or entirely 'early Anglo-Saxon' even by the start of the seventh century, and appears to have been even less so in the fifth and earlier sixth centuries, what then was it? In this light, it is worth considering further the fact that significant areas appear to have been empty of, or only sparsely populated by, culturally Anglo-Saxon graves in this era. If they were not entirely devoid of
population and abandoned, a hypothesis now generally considered to be extremely unlikely, then were they were culturally and/or politically dominated by the former Romano-British inhabitants of this region? In other words, was Lincolnshire, or at least parts of Lincolnshire, in some way 'sub-Roman' or even 'Late Antique' in these
centuries, perhaps with the local Romano-British culture and institutions only gradually
declining through the fifth century and the label 'Anglo-Saxon' potentially becoming more generally appropriate towards the end of the sixth-century?

Once again, there
is considerable merit in this position, with a strong case to be made for the former Romano-Britons of Lincoln having continued to control a large area around the city into at least the early sixth
century. The avoidance of the former provincial capital by the major cremation cemeteries of this region is in itself important evidence for such a post-Roman British territory, offering a very marked contrast to the situation at and around other major Roman centres in eastern and northern Britain such as York, Leicester, and Caistor-by-Norwich, where significant Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries are found close by. This avoidance of Lincoln can be very clearly seen on the second map above, with the nearest large cremation cemetery to Lincoln being that at Loveden Hill, over 27 km to the south of the city. Furthermore, as was noted above, the small inhumation cemeteries similarly only really start to encroach on Lincoln after the early sixth century, something which is again suggestive.

However, the cemetery evidence does not stand alone. Only a selection of the evidence can be cited here, but of particular note is the fact that the name of a post-Roman British territory focussed on Lincoln—*Lindēs—was actually preserved in both
British and Anglo-Saxon sources and names, most importantly in the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom-name Lindissi and the modern district-name Lindsey, both of which derive from the Late British territory-name *Lindēs rather than any Old English name. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxons of Lincolnshire's own
name for themselves—the Lindisfaran, 'the people who migrated, faran, to the territory of *Lindēs'—makes explicit reference to the fact that they arrived as migrants into this British territory of *Lindēs. Similarly, there is now a remarkable quantity of British fifth- and sixth-century high-status metalwork known from the Lincoln region, which suggests a significant degree of post-Roman British activity here and the presence of British elites throughout the region. Perhaps most notable of all, however, is the fact that a recent reconsideration of the radiocarbon and other data from the excavated apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, indicates that this was almost certainly a British church of the fifth–sixth centuries that was located in the centre of the Roman forum and able to hold up to 100 worshippers, not a later Anglo-Saxon construction as has sometimes been suggested.

Reconstruction of the apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, within the Roman forum (image: extract of Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 13, by David Vale/SLHA)

The distribution of early Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries, represented by filled squares, plotted against Saxon artefacts of the second half of the fifth century, represented by stars, and the Late Roman provincial boundaries (image: C. R. Green, published as Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig, 21a).

As such, a label 'sub-Roman', or
even 'Late Antique', would seem to have some applicability to the Lincoln region, especially for the fifth and earlier sixth centuries. Indeed, there are even hints that a vestige of Roman provincial control from Lincoln survived at least some way into the fifth century. Although we do need to be cautious here, it has been suggested that a real distinction appears to be observable between a mainly Anglian cultural zone and a mainly Saxon one in the archaeology of the fifth century, and that the dividing line between the two accords surprisingly well with the most recent reconstruction of the Late Roman provincial boundaries, with early Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries being nearly all located within the province controlled by Lincoln. Equally, a tentative case can be made for the major cremation cemeteries of Lincolnshire having been sited in a ring around Lincoln as part of a deliberate defensive scheme for the protection of the former provincial capital—not only are the cemeteries at or close to potential strategic sites, but their distribution is very similar in pattern to that of the apparent last stage in the deployment of the late Roman army in the Lincoln region (based on recent artefactual studies), leading to the suggestion that the people who used these large cemeteries may have been tasked with a similar defensive role with regard to Lincoln. Needless to say, both suggestions would add weight to the case for the region being effectively 'sub-Roman' in the earlier part of the period, rather than there being a complete collapse of Romano-British culture and political institutions here. It is also interesting to note that such a scenario as the above accords interestingly well with the textual, 'Gildasian' account of the Anglo-Saxon arrival in Britain as federate mercenaries, employed by the post-Roman Britons in the fifth century for defence after the withdrawal of the Roman army.

Of course, it has to be admitted that the evidence for cultural continuity that we have from Lincoln and its surrounding territory does
not approach that found on the continent, nor do we have any epigraphic evidence for continued Latin literacy or evidence for the import of Late Antique material culture and goods from the Mediterranean such as is found in western parts of Britain. Nonetheless, the indications that we have of the existence of a post-Roman British territory based around the former provincial capital are, when taken together, persuasive, and the evidence for both a degree of potential provincial continuity and a continuing Christian community located in Lincoln, using a church built in the centre of the old forum, is most intriguing. However, whilst a 'sub-Roman' or similar label might hold good whilst the Britons
retained control of Lincoln through the fifth century, what of the period after
the early-mid sixth century, when the 'Anglo-Saxons' were clearly the ascendant
power, with Lincoln being the probable centre of an Anglo-Saxon polity named Lindissi—'Lindsey'—in the early
seventh century? Can we envisage a simple division of our period
between an earlier, 'sub-Roman', stage, which then ended and was replaced by a
new 'Anglo-Saxon' one, or was the reality rather more complicated than this would imply?

For a number of reasons, such a model seems potentially unsatisfactory. Not only have we already seen that the 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology of the area immediately around Lincoln remains meagre right into the seventh century when compared to that in the 'peripheral area', but it can be argued that the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi was to a large extent simply the British territory of *Lindēs under new rule, both in terms of its name and also of what we can know and reconstruct of its internal organisation. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that the post-Roman Britons simply disappeared or immediately abandoned their 'Britishness' when they lost control of *Lindēs. Indeed, there is a good case to be made both for non-Anglo-Saxonised Britons having comprised the majority of the population of Lincolnshire into the seventh century and for them having continued to be distinguishable within it for some time.

The suggested minimum boundaries of the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi, against the likely landscape of the period and showing the Prehistoric-Medieval causeways across the Witham valley (image: C. R. Green, derived from Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 25)

For instance, if we look at some of the
available linguistic evidence, it is clear that there is rather more place-name evidence for Anglo-Saxon and British
interaction than is sometimes allowed, and some of this is particularly intriguing. Thus some names from the Lincoln region seem to suggest the continued existence of communities of British-speakers in parts of Lincolnshire as late as the later eighth
century (on the basis of our usual understanding of place-name
chronologies), whilst others appear to represent 'early Anglo-Saxon' -ingas population-groups named after individuals who seem to possess a
Brittonic (British) name, rather than an Anglo-Saxon one. An especially nice illustration of this comes from the area around Threekingham in south Lincolnshire. Here we have a distinct group of high-status, post-Roman British metalwork, suggestive of the presence of members of the fifth- and sixth-century British elite, which happens to come from an area that also has both an -ingas group apparently formed around a man with a British name and other place-name evidence for the existence of British-speakers into the eighth century! Such a combination of evidence is, of course, most intriguing and the Threekingham area might consequently be seen as one in which post-Roman British elites and their dependants 'became' Anglo-Saxon
and forming an ingas-group within the new Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi after the end of British *Lindēs, whilst also perhaps retaining some elements of their 'Britishness' for a period.

So, to return to the question we started with, what then should we actually call Lincolnshire
in the fifth and sixth centuries? On the whole, none of the names proposed for this era, either nationally or locally, seem
fully appropriate for the entire period. Certainly, the
notion that this is was truly a 'Dark Age' doesn't really work: our evidence may
be thin, but if one is willing to use all of the available evidence—the archaeological,
linguistic, literary and historical—then at least the general outlines seem potentially recoverable. However, even if we restrict ourselves to the less romantic labels,
we are left with problems. Although the fifth century might well be described
as 'sub-Roman' and/or 'Late Antique', with the former Romano-Britons controlling the region from the Late Roman provincial capital, using items of high-status British metalwork which had their roots in the Late Roman period, and maintaining a church in the centre of the old forum, this label doesn't really work
for the sixth-century as a whole, with Lincolnshire being one of the primary
areas of Anglo-Saxon immigration and the Anglo-Saxons having almost certainly taken over British *Lindēsto form the kingdom of Lindissi at some point in this century. For similar reasons,
the label 'early Anglo-Saxon' doesn't really work either: not only does it
appear inappropriate for the earlier parts of period, but the kingdom of Lindissi had clear British roots and there
arguably remained a strong British element in both the Lincolnshire population
and culture through the latter part of the sixth century and into the
seventh.

In
this context, I'm tempted to suggest that if we decide that we must apply a
label, or labels, to the fifth and sixth centuries that reflects our
understanding of the period, then we might do worse than consider a variant of Chris
Snyder's suggestion that the period of British rule after the departure of the
Roman legions ought to be termed 'Brittonic', rather than the perhaps
slightly-pejorative 'sub-Roman', reflecting the natives own term for themselves
at this time (the Britons) and the name of the language that they used
(Brittonic, Late British). A term 'Anglo-Brittonic' for the fifth and sixth centuries in Lincolnshire would reflect many of the issues discussed above, emphasising both the undeniable new Anglian element present in the region from the fifth century onwards, whilst also acknowledging that historians no longer imagine that all of the pre-existing inhabitants were exterminated or driven out in that century by the Anglian immigrants, nor that the Britons had no impact on the political and cultural life of the region in this period. However, I fear that introducing yet another term for these centuries is unlikely to prove a popular move, and in the absence of any groundswell of support for such a movement I would suggest that the dry, factual 'post-Roman' is probably the best alternative label that we currently possess, given that it avoids assigning any cultural designation to the period beyond acknowledging that the Roman Empire had surrendered de facto political control in the early fifth century.

The above post was, in the main, written several years ago as a conference paper on the topic of whether 'sub-Roman' or 'Anglo-Saxon' was a better descriptor of fifth- to sixth-century Lincolnshire, and is offered here simply for interest; fully detailed, referenced, revised, and final versions of the arguments and evidence briefly mentioned above are now available in my Britons and Anglo-Saxons, along with a significant amount of additional material.

About This Website

This is the blog of Dr Caitlin Green. Although my main academic research foci and publications are dealt with elsewhere, this blog will feature posts on these and other topics that I'm currently working on, including drafts of papers, ideas and similar—these are usually identifiable by the presence of footnotes. You're free to cite these drafts if they are of interest, and are reminded that academic blogs are indeed citable under most citation systems. In addition, the current site also houses posts relating to my personal interests, including landscape and coastal history, long-distance contacts, early literature and legends, and the history, archaeology, place-names and legends of Lincolnshire. For further details of this website & how to contact me, please see the 'About' page or @caitlinrgreen on Twitter.